Session 2 on Working Together to Grow Our Movement involved presentations by Daniel Blewitt, Executive Director of the new Young World Federalists, John Vlasto, Associate of Democracy Without Borders, and Martin Chibanda, also of the Young World Federalists. Daniel and his YWF organization on social media were the stars of the day, being able to boast of over 5000 followers on reddit, and 100 active members, less than a year after their foundation! Daniel, with his experience in online marketing, stressed that in order to attract more young people to the movement, we need to improve our “branding”, using more direct language and universal symbols, which will be more easily found by people searching on the web. He argued that there was plenty of sympathy for our ideas out there, but most people these days have know nothing about world federalism and have never heard of it. Andreas Bummel mentioned the change of name of his group to the international ‘Democracy Without Borders’. There was also considerable discussion of the ‘crisis in democracy’ due to the rising challenge from authoritarian states. Peter and Keith promised to discuss the branding issue in future board meetings.
Session 3 on The Need for a Post-Covid World Order I didn’t attend (very late, Sydney time).
 

Day 2, morning.
Session 4. The first presentation on Transnational Working Groups for World Federalist Solutions was a short summary by Fernando Iglesias (President of the WFM), on the need for TWGs involving collaborations with other civil society organizations to carry on the work of the WFM. He acts as coordinator for the TWGs. Then there was a presentation moderated by Camile Badra (Executive
Director, Democracia Global)on Opportunities and Challenges in AI and Global Governance by Robert Whitfield, (Chair of Trustees, One World Trust), Marcelo Lemos (member TWG), and Didier Courneille (Co-Chair, Healthy Life Extension Society). They painted a picture straight out of science fiction of a future driven by artificial intelligence! It could bring great benefits, such as everybody living in luxury while all the work is done by robots (as in Wall-E), and possibly eternal life for humans (!); and also great dangers, such as automated nuclear war, automated cyber crime, mass unemployment, and even cyborgs with super-intelligence taking over the world, maybe in as little as thirty years! They argued the need for global regulation of the industry.

Session 5 on Key Campaigns of the World Federalist Movement involved presentations by AnjiManivannan (Director of Programs WFM-IGP), on the work of the Coalition for the International Criminal Court (CICC) and the International Coalition for the Responsibility to Protect (ICRtoP), plus CamileBadra (Executive Director, Democracia Global), on the Latin American and Caribbean Criminal Court against Organized Crime (COPLA).

The first two campaigns are the greatest successes of the movement so far, largely due to the previous Executive Director Bill Pace, and have taken up most of the finances of the group. The CICC now has 2500 civil society organizations as members! But they are facing challenging times, e.g. the US has imposed sanctions against the ICC, and the R2P doctrine has not been invoked again ever since the Libyan intervention ended in chaos for that country. The receptiveness for these ideas has declined, and we need to do something to highlight again the need for prevention of mass atrocities.

The third campaign in Latin America is mainly to the credit of Fernando Iglesias and his organization Democracia Global, and is very active at the moment. Camile showed some slides on it. The idea has been endorsed by the Argentinian Parliament, and the Parliament of MERCOSUR; they are working on persuading other nations in Latin America to approve it.
 

Session 6 on UN Reform Campaigns involved presentations by Fergus Watt, Executive Director WFM – Canada on the UN2020 Campaign; Andreas Bummel, Executive Director, Democracy Without Borders on the UNPA campaign; and Prof Fritz Pointer together with Vernita Pearl Fort from the Democratic World Federalists on UN Charter Review. Our members should be familiar with the first two campaigns from emails we have been distributing, and the visit of Andreas to Australia which we sponsored last year. The DWF discussion placed heavy emphasis on Article 109 of the 1945 Charter, which promised a Review within the first ten years, but was never implemented. I’m afraid relying on a legal argument is never going to be enough .